Farooque Azam Memon

Pakistan Zindabad 🇵🇰 ❤️

Pakistan’s $7 Billion Power Burden Pakistan’s power sector looks very different when expressed in dollars. Annual capacity payments are now around US$7 billion (≈ Rs 2.0–2.3 trillion), based on projections from the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority and official briefings. These are fixed, contractual payments, largely independent of actual electricity consumption. They are servicing an IPP fleet with an estimated US$30–35 billion in total investment: US$22–28 billion in debt (70–80%) US$6–9 billion in equity (20–30%) (constructed from project-level data via the Private Power and Infrastructure Board and China–Pakistan Economic Corridor disclosures; no consolidated balance sheet exists). Tenor Most post-2013 (CPEC-era) IPPs were structured with: Contract tenors of ~25–30 years Debt tenors typically 10–15 years, with front-loaded repayment profiles Equity returns locked in for the full concession period This matters enormously. The system is designed to recover a large portion of capital in the early-to-mid years, not evenly over 25–30 years. So the US$7 billion annual capacity payment is not just “high”—it is structurally front-loaded. What That Implies A US$30–35 billion asset base generating ~US$7 billion annually means: ~20% of total capital being serviced each year A significant portion of debt being repaid within the first decade Equity IRRs protected through fixed dollar indexation over long tenors This creates a compressed cash flow cycle: High payments in early years Limited flexibility if demand underperforms Persistent burden even after debt amortisation (through capacity charges and returns) Why It Became Unsustainable Three forces collided with this structure: 1. Rupee depreciation Dollar-linked returns + rupee revenues = automatic escalation in PKR capacity payments 2. Low utilisation (~40–45% thermal) Fixed payments spread over fewer units = higher tariffs → lower demand 3. Overestimation of demand growth The system was built for a demand curve that never materialised The Real Distortion Pakistan’s issue is not just overcapacity—it is front-loaded, dollar-indexed capacity financed on medium-term debt but paid for in a weak currency economy. The tenor mismatch amplifies the burden: Debt wants repayment in 10–15 years Contracts lock payments for 25–30 years Consumers cannot absorb the resulting tariffs Renegotiations: Extending the Curve Recent renegotiations were effectively trying to reprofile the tenor but failed to include the Chinese IPPs, which account for a big chunk of the capacity payments. Extending payment periods Smoothing cash flows Reducing near-term capacity charges This can lower the annual $7 billion run rate at the margin. But it does not eliminate the core issue: the system remains financially rigid and structurally dollar-linked. Bottom Line A US$7 billion annual payment on a US$30–35 billion base is not just a cost problem—it is a badly designed tenor and structure problem. Pakistan built a power system where: Capital is recovered quickly Returns are dollar-protected Payments are fixed —but demand, currency, and affordability are none of those things. That mismatch—not just capacity—is what is breaking the system.

ایک بار پھر نیو کراچی نالے کی ویڈیوز بنا کر پیپلز پارٹی پر تنقید کی جا رہی ہے۔ مگر اصل حقائق کیا ہیں؟ کس نے 1500 سے زائد مکانات اور دکانیں نالے پر قائم کر کے نکاسی کا نظام تباہ و برباد کیا؟ اور ناجائز تجاوزات کے خلاف آپریشن رکوانے کے لیے عدالت سے رجوع کس نے کیا؟

The recent conflict involving Iran, the United States, and Israel has significantly impacted trade dynamics in the region. Previously, many Iranian banks operated in the UAE, facilitating the import of various commodities and equipment to Jebel Ali, which allowed Iran to circumvent sanctions. Cargo worth billions of dollars was swiftly transported from UAE ports like Jebel Ali and Khorfakkan to Iran. However, the deteriorating relationship between the UAE and Iran has halted these activities. This situation presents a unique opportunity for Pakistani companies to serve as intermediaries, leveraging Karachi and Gwadar as transit hubs for meeting Iran's import needs via both maritime and overland routes.

The recent conflict involving Iran, the United States, and Israel has significantly impacted trade dynamics in the region. Previously, many Iranian banks operated in the UAE, facilitating the import of various commodities and equipment to Jebel Ali, which allowed Iran to circumvent sanctions. Cargo worth billions of dollars was swiftly transported from UAE ports like Jebel Ali and Khorfakkan to Iran. However, the deteriorating relationship between the UAE and Iran has halted these activities. This situation presents a unique opportunity for Pakistani companies to serve as intermediaries, leveraging Karachi and Gwadar as transit hubs for meeting Iran's import needs via both maritime and overland routes.

آئی پی پیز کو سرے سے ختم کرنا چاہیے اس سلسلے میں جتنا بھی جرمانہ ہو قوم ادا کرنے کے لیے تیار ہو مگر یہ گند ایک دفعہ ختم ہو جائے ازسرنو بجلی کا نیا نظام متعارف کروایا جائے مسئلہ یہ ہے کہ موجودہ مہنگی بجلی عوام کو دے کر بھی پیسے پاکستان کے اکاؤنٹ میں نہیں جارہے بلکہ پرائیویٹ کمپنیوں کے مالکان کی طرف جارہے ہیں ریاست پاکستان کے اکاؤنٹ جائیں تو اسکا ملک کو فائدہ ہو وزیراعظم شہباز شریف کو بولڈ فیصلہ لینا پڑے گا

الطاف حسین مائنس ہوگیا کراچی بھی موجود ہے اور حیدرآباد بھی موجود ہے ۔ کراچی کا میئر بھی پیپلز پارٹی کا ہے اور حیدرآباد کا میئر بھی پیپلز پارٹی کا ہے ۔

سب کے سب ستو پی کر سو گئے ہیں ۔ صرف @murtazawahab1 پر تنقید کرتے ہیں میڈیا ٹرائل کرتے ہیں۔ یہاں کوئی نہیں بول رہا سب گونگے ہوگئے ہیں۔۔ @ammarmasood3 @amberdanishh @ali_aimy @AmirZia1 @wajih_sani @AzazSyed @UmarCheema1 @ShamaJunejo @nadia_a_mirza @FaizullahSwati @WaseemBadami

JUST IN: On April 26, 2026, the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported that Iran is no longer willing to negotiate any limits on its nuclear program in the Pakistani-mediated talks. Discussions are limited to ending the war, sanctions relief, war compensation, lifting the US blockade, and the legal status of the Strait of Hormuz. Nuclear, Tasnim reported, “could be addressed later in a separate agreement” only after the war has ended. The headlines are reading this as Iranian hardening. The structural reading is the opposite. Iran is not refusing nuclear because it has leverage. Iran is refusing because it has run out of time to negotiate anything else first. On April 21, Bessent stated publicly: “In a matter of days, Kharg Island storage will be full and the fragile Iranian oil wells will be shut in.” Kharg handles ninety percent of Iranian crude exports. Spare onshore storage is roughly thirteen million barrels. Net inflows from continuing production minus suppressed exports run at one to one point one million barrels per day. Twelve to thirteen days from April 26. Saturation lands in early May. On April 24, satellite imagery showed the M/T NASHA, a thirty-year-old VLCC built in 1996 with two-million-barrel capacity, towed toward Kharg as emergency floating storage. The transit took four days against a normal one and a half. NASHA buys roughly forty-eight hours. Forced shut-ins are not a pause. They cause reservoir damage, water coning and fines migration documented in petroleum engineering literature, that reduces long-term recoverable output by percentage points that compound. A regime that cannot maintain its production base cannot fund its IRGC or sustain its currency. Lloyd’s List has documented at least twenty-six shadow fleet bypasses since the blockade began on April 13. CENTCOM has redirected thirty-seven vessels and intercepted the M/V Sevan in the Arabian Sea on April 26, the day after Treasury sanctioned it. The Goreh-Jask pipeline, Iran’s only Hormuz alternative, runs at three hundred thousand barrels per day against the one million that needs evacuation. The IRGC’s bargaining power is now measured in barrels of remaining onshore storage. Each barrel filled reduces leverage. Each NASHA hour expires. The strongest contrarian counter, from FGE NextantECA via Reuters, holds that Iran can sustain roughly two months without exports using full domestic storage and refining. That covers the system. Kharg is the chokepoint. Ninety percent of crude flows through one terminal whose tanks fill in twelve to thirteen days. The system buys weeks. The valve closes in days. This is why nuclear has been dropped from the table. Tehran cannot negotiate nuclear because Tehran cannot afford the diplomatic time the storage crisis no longer permits. The sequencing demand, war end first then nuclear later, is a confession of physical constraint dressed as posture. Trump understood this on April 25 when he texted New York Post reporter Caitlin Doornbos: “Come home!!!” The political escape route closed on the same forty-eight hours NASHA was buying. Three readings of April 26. Iranian hardening on nuclear under blockade pressure. Priced. Tactical IRGC sequencing to extract sanctions relief before nuclear concessions. Narrow. The first publicly verifiable demonstration that Iran’s bargaining power is now mathematically tied to onshore Kharg storage capacity, that NASHA is the visible signature of forty-eight remaining hours, and that the nuclear deferral is a confession of constraint dressed as posture. Tehran is pricing the first. The Kharg gauges are settling the third. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

HEC chairman eulogizes standards of education at Arore University are no lesser than any University of Lahore & Islamabad. Sindh is shining 🌟 & developing.

🚨⚠️ What If Israel Attacked Inside Pakistan During U.S.–Iran Talks? 🇮🇱🇵🇰🇺🇸🌍

JUST IN: At dawn on Sunday, the Suezmax tanker OTIS arrived in Tokyo Bay carrying 910,000 barrels of Texas light crude that had loaded in Houston on March 22 and transited the Panama Canal. The cargo was pumped through an undersea pipeline to Cosmo Oil’s Chiba refinery, the same plant that has historically run UAE and Saudi medium-sour crude. It was the first US shipment of crude to Japan since the start of the Iran war on February 28. The volume is approximately half a day of Japan’s domestic consumption, per Cosmo and METI’s own framing. That is the part the headlines are pricing. The headline is the wrong story. The actual story is that Japan, which sourced 94.2 percent of its crude from the Middle East as recently as February, has begun physically reconfiguring a seventy-year energy architecture in fifty-five days. METI confirmed yesterday that barely half of May’s crude requirement has been secured. Refiners, already running at sixty-seven to sixty-eight percent utilization before the crisis, have begun reducing operating rates further because they cannot find enough Middle East-equivalent crude. Japan begins drawing 36.48 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve on May 1, valued at three point four billion dollars. It is the second draw since the war began. The OTIS is the photograph of a pivot. The pivot itself is structural. Japanese refineries were built around the API gravity and sulfur profile of Persian Gulf crude. Texas WTI is roughly 40 API and 0.4 percent sulfur. Saudi Arab Light is 33 API and 1.8 percent sulfur. Running light sweet through a hydrotreater configured for medium sour produces the wrong product mix: more naphtha and gasoline, less diesel and jet. Japan’s transport fleet runs on diesel and jet. The yield distortion shows up as inventory drawdowns on the products Japan actually consumes. This is why the refineries are cutting runs. Not because they lack crude. Because they lack the right crude. Three more US tankers are scheduled to deliver to Japan in May. US crude exports to Asia have surged from 1.1 million barrels per day pre-war to a forecast 3.29 million in May. Panama Canal crude transits hit a four-year high in early April. Auction premiums to skip the queue have reached four million dollars per slot. The two largest Japanese investments announced at the March 19 Trump-Takaichi summit were forty billion dollars in GE Vernova small modular reactors and thirty-three billion in natural gas facilities, both on US soil. Japan hit two percent of GDP in defense spending in fiscal 2025, two years early. The FY2026 defense budget is a record 9.04 trillion yen, including stand-off missile capabilities and a SHIELD coastal drone network. Japan, holding 1.239 trillion dollars in US Treasuries, is financing US energy capacity, buying US energy in dollars, accelerating its rearmament under US tech transfer, and recycling those dollars back into Treasury markets that fund the carrier groups enforcing the blockade that closed Hormuz. Three readings of the OTIS arrival. A symbolic shipment that fills less than half a day of demand. Priced. Tactical diversification that ends if Hormuz reopens. Narrow. The first publicly verifiable photograph of the United States repositioning itself from Middle East security guarantor to Indo-Pacific energy supplier inside a sixty-day window, with Japan financing the substitution and Beijing three weeks away. The headlines are pricing the first. Cosmo just refined the third. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

افغان طالبان خودکش جیکٹ پہنے شہری آبادی کی طرف بڑھ رہے تھے کہ مارخور نے وہی پر نشانہ لگا کر واصل جہنم کر دیا،،،

پٹواریوں نے صدر زرداری کو ایڈز کا مریض بنا دیا تھا اور صدر زرداری صاحب اس وقت چائنہ والوں کے ساتھ چائنہ میں ہیں اور ریاست سربراہ کی حیثیت سے پاکستان کی نمائندگی کر رہے ہیں ۔ دو عدد الطافی گٹکے خوروں نے پٹواریوں کے کہنے پر ایک کمپین چلائی کہ زرداری صاحب کو ریاست نے ریاستی معاملات سے الگ کردیا ہے ۔

@Ministerculture @SyZulfiqarShah Please take initiative to construct Mirpurkhas Mirwah by pass road

The Provincial Minister for Culture and Tourism, @SyZulfiqarShah held meetings with people at his residence in the village Syed Khadim Ali Shah, listened to their concerns, and issued immediate directives for their prompt resolution.

و تعز من تشاء وتزل من تشاء شہید ذوالفقار علی بھٹو سے لےکر آصف علی زرداری تک یہ تصویر ریاستی نہیں نسل در نسل گرمجوشی سے بھرپور ذاتی تعلقات کو بیان کررہی ہے پاک چائنا دوستی دراصل پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی اور پیپلز کانگریس چائنہ دوستی ہے @BBhuttoZardari @BakhtawarBZ @AseefaBZ

ایم کیو ایم کے سابق رہنما شاہد پاشا نے دعویٰ کیا ہے کہ تینوں گروپ کرپٹ اور رابطہ کمیٹی کے چھوٹے سے چھوٹے اراکین بھی کروڑ پتی ہیں، پہلے ایم کیو ایم خود کو ٹھیک کرے پھر کراچی ٹھیک ہوگا۔ #ZarayeNews #ShahidPasha #MQMPakistan

موسیقی، رقص، آرٹ، فلسفہ، تاریخ اور ادب وہ ستون ہیں جن پر ایک روشن خیال اور متوازن معاشرے کی بنیاد کھڑی ہوتی ہے۔

چلیں تھوڑا موڈ لائیٹ کریں 😉

The takeover of Hong Kong by China prompted a demand for a free port, leading shipping lines to redirect their operations to Singapore as an alternative maritime hub. However, due to Singapore's limited capacity, international stakeholders began to consider Colombo and Karachi. Unfortunately, the presence of the LTTE in Sri Lanka and the MQM in Pakistan created significant law and order challenges, hindering the development of these ports. Consequently, the international community shifted its focus to Dubai, which emerged as a viable option for shipping routes to Africa and Europe, offering reduced warehousing costs compared to Hong Kong and Singapore.

ایران نے شام میں جو مظالم ڈھائے وہ ناقابل بیان ہیں دونوں کے مفادات مشترکہ ہیں آج مکافات عمل لوٹ کر آرہا ہے